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Tag Archives: Opensim Grids

Well, I want to try the most extreme sides of a coin. First, yes I am going log to Osgrid but also I will be logging on Inworldz too. But why I have taken this desition ?, currently I want to see how diferent are both grids than SL. What kind of residents I can meet in there and what kind of new experiences I can have.

But why Osgrid and Inworldz ?, even they don’t have so much users like SL, they do have an interesting quantity of users but also Osgrid is a opensource project while Inworldz is a commercial grid so that’s the main difference while the use (as I known) the same technology which is Open Simulator. Here is a little information about both of them (extracted from their websites):

“InWorldz: is a Virtual World initially based off the OpenSim software. Efforts however, are being made to move past this source code and becoming closer to the Second Life standard for working improvements.

Osgrid: Osgrid is the Open Source Grid which is powered by the Open Simulator. OSgrid Inc. is a California Non-profit Public Benefit Corporation.”

Here is a little more info of both grids:

Osgrd Users and Regions:

Users: 74073

Regions: 8035

———————————————–

Inworldz Users and Regions:

Users: 53600

Regions: 906

As we see the number of users and regions are so different, Osgrid has more regions and more users even they are a open source metaverse. I think that they are bigger than Inworldz, because Osgrid enable to anyone to have a sim just with an internet connection and one computer.

“Osgrid mainscreen on a Third Party SL Viewer”

Speaking about the connection with both grids, I began to use an standard V1 Sl Viewer on this case I was using CoolViewer 1.24. with Osgrid and Inworldz. I didn’t have any problem using Cool Viewer with Osgrid, while it was the oppositive with Inworldz which became a little bit unstable and even I had problems loading my inventory. I got a error message (which I will speak about in another post) when I wanted to teleport myself to another region: “Inconsistent Attachment State”.

“Inworldz mainscreen on a Third Party SL Viewer”

I couldn’t understand why when i logged to Inworldz became so unestable, so I was thinking to use another viewer as Phoenix but I had my own doubts if this will work, I decided to look again on the web searching some information when found this:

“The InWorldz server seems to have no idea what the proper attachment point is, or cannot render it there. I believe they have implemented the new attachment features in a way that is not backwards-compatible with existing servers, and only works with new servers (perhaps only SL servers) that can handle the new way. That means Phoenix is currently incompatible with InWorldz and will screw up your attachments. I highly recommend that nobody use Phoenix on InWorldz until such time as I can get a chance to debug this and find a way to put in some defensive code in the IW server to prevent Phoenix from damaging IW attachment points. “

“This is the main region of Osgrid where all the residents come at the first time”

Phoenix and CoolViewer use the same codebase of V1, and this is why Inworldz became so unstable. I don’t have any problem to use another viewer with both grids and in this case I choosed AstraViewer which is a fork of Singularity.

“And this is the main region of Inworldz where all the residents arrive at the first login”

One interesting thing I found in both grids, it is about how friendly and helpful are residents but they have something really important, they don’t charge for uploads like files or objects. They have freebies which it is really important too. From this momemt, all my post will be extended to three grids: Osgrid, Inworldz and SL. This is going to be a really good experience!.

I found this is a interesting subject to talk, because recently some blogs are speaking about that “Opensim regions top Second life private sims”, i don’t want to discuss about but just to present some reasons and facts. But, how is this possible ?, here is a easy answer: “Free or Cheap Opensim sims” and another thing is that there are more and more opensim grids providers (and they are still growing) than just one grid provider like Second Life, so that is another of the reasons why they are more opensim regions than second life regions. We aren’t speaking about one opensim service provider, here’s a list I have taken from Opensimulator website:

And may be there will be more Opensim Regions, if there will be more Opensim Grids providers. This is something that will not going stop into the future, Opensimulator is a opensource software and anyone can use it to build a grid server even on your own computer (later I will speak how you can do this). Sometimes when I see this list of the Opensim Grids, its remember to me something very similar with an Opensource Operating System, I am speaking about Linux. There are so many Linux distributions as there are so many Opensim grids on the internet. So how this is possible?, it is a easy answer, because the license of Opensimulator allow to do it:

“OpenSimulator is an open source multi-platform, multi-user 3D application server. It can be used to create a virtual environment (or world) which can be accessed through a variety of clients, on multiple protocols. OpenSimulator allows virtual world developers to customize their worlds using the technologies they feel work best – we’ve designed the framework to be easily extensible. OpenSimulator is written in C#, running both on Windows over the .NET Framework and on Unix-like machines over the Mono framework. The source code is released under a BSD License, a commercially friendly license to embed OpenSimulator in products.”

For those who doesn’t knows what it is a “BSD License”, here is an information about (wikipedia):

“BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses. The original license was used for the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a Unix-like operating system after which it is named.The original owners of BSD were the Regents of the University of California because BSD was first written at the University of California, Berkeley. The first version of the license was revised, and the resulting licenses are more properly called modified BSD licenses.

Being a permissive free software license, the license places minimal restrictions on how the software can be redistributed. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have reciprocity / share-alike requirements.”

The prices are other facts (like the current economic situation in the world) that have taken people to change from a second life sim to a opensim sim, even me I can’t pay for a second life sim which cost around $295 a month and even more than that. With this bargain (free and cheaper opensim sims) it make possible that someone can have a region or a sim.

BUT there is something we need to review, we are comparing all the opensim grids with one grid provider (second life). If you just compare one opensim grid with second life grid, then you will see that it will have less regions. I want to explain this with an example:

“In one big country, there’s a big fastfood company with their own private license hamburger recipe, but in this country there are thousand of small fastfood companies sharing a “free license” hamburger recipe. The big fastfood company has something like two hundred restaurants. While the small fastfood companies have each other a few restaurants.

If you count all restaurants of the all small fastfood companies, offcourse they could be a lot than the big fastfood company. But what happened if you take one of this small fastfood companies and you compare with the big one ?, you will see that always the big company would have more restaurants than any small company in the country.”

So this is how I see it:

Osgrid has 11,919 regions and Second Life has 23356 regions.

I think that you cannot compare all the regions of the opensim grids with the regions of second life grid. You can compare one on one, but not one hundred against one (that’s what I think about). Can you compare all the small stores who sells a “free license ” orange juice formula with a big store with their own”private license” orange juice formula ?.

Usually in SL, we always hear about “Prims” and “Sculpts” but in the lastest months we hear about “Mesh Viewers” and “Mesh”. Even I didn’t know myself what it is this about until I began to read about on the net. Then I made some test just getting some freebies and demos (in Second Life), I really have a good impression about the high detail of this objects and how easy is just wear them. Testing mesh in Sl was fun but what about Opensim?, do we have a mesh support for it?.

We all know that Opensim is still under development and the current state is alpha (not even beta), so don’t be strange that mesh is still on development too. Here is some reference about Mesh in Opesim (extracted from their webpage):

“OpenSimulator supports the use of collada meshes. It must be noted that at the time of this writing, mesh support is still under development at Linden Labs, and they make changes to that all the time. Therefore, we can not guarantee that the current implementation of mesh support in OpenSim will be 100% compatible to the final version on SecondLife, once that gets rolled out. If you plan on using OpenSim to develop meshes for SecondLife, make sure you update Opensim frequently.”

So may be this means that mesh is well supported on Opensim and not in SL ?, currently I don’t know so much about it but It is true and possible that the mesh is still under development at Lindens Labs. Mesh is a great thing and for those who have read the post about Blender, this is a really good opensource program for build Sculpts and Mesh. There are some opensource viewers(1) that you can use to see mesh in Opensim. Some suggested viewers for use and develop Mesh which are V3 (Specially FireStorm) here’s a small list of the V1 viewers (Please remember that V1 and V3 with mesh support will not work on very old computer, check my post about “Who is developing The SL Viewer 1 with Mesh Support ?“) that can be used to see Mesh in Opensim:

The CoolViewer: This is one of the oldest SL Viewer’s that are still with us but the first one to include Mesh support for V1 Viewers, in the forum of cool viewer it says clearly why it was created: “The Cool SL Viewer strives to maintain a coherent (and pretty constant) UI, implements some new handy features that LL would take months to integrate, plugs all the regressions found in newer viewers, and provides a much stronger stability than LL’s own viewer”.

The PhoenixViewer: Phoenix Viewer is based on Linden Lab’s Viewer Version 1.23.5 and Snowglobe 1.5. But also their support for Mesh in V1 Viewers is based from CoolViewer. Phoenix is one of the most and used viewers in Second Life (may be not on Opensim) and the main characteristic is that stability, easy to use gui (graphical user interface) and one of the faster (btw my favorite one).

The Astra Viewer: An experimental Snowglobe 1.5 based Second Life Viewer focusing on performance, but also including all the usual conveniences. The Astra Viewer is a mix of the Imprudence Viewer with Mesh Support. Imprudence is one of the most used viewers for Opensim.

Speaking about V3 Viewers that can be used Opesim, I have just tested one :

Firestrom: It is based on Linden Lab’s Viewer versions 2 and 3, as in their webpage it says ” it has added features to improve performance, increase usability, and generally enhance the user’s overall experience”. This is one of the most stable V3 viewer’s that I have tested before, and one of the most recommended to test mesh inworld.

It is possible that in the next post, I will try to find and test some Mesh objects in opensim (If I can find them or even I have to make some basic mesh in blender).

(1) if you use a new viewer that is so different from your main viewer in opensim, it could make some changes in your inventory or make the “cloud avatar”, for more details read about “Cloud Avatars in Opensim” in this blog.